Shipping crates and shipping pallets are widely used to distribute items worldwide. For example, it is estimated that in the US alone, over 500 million shipping pallets are manufactured each year and 1.8-1.9 billion pallets are currently in use. About 100 million plastic macro bins, about 80 million kegs, and several other assets are active in the US economy. One common issue with distributing items is tracking and monitoring the items as they travel from one location to another. For example, identifying each pallet and cargo that sits on top of it when it departs and/or arrives at a location, as well as entering this data into a system is labor intensive and time consuming. Current systems use passive electronic devices, such as a passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) device, however use of passive electronic devices have some drawbacks. For example, to utilize a passive RFID device a proper infrastructure must be established at each shipping location to power and read the RFID device, which can cost, for example up to $50,000 for an RFID gate. Further, passive RFID devices provide only limited functionality and cannot communicate with other RFID devices to share data, gather data or enforce data policies to control the data that is shared with an RFID device reader. Accordingly, improvements are needed.